The stage is set by the Arroyo regime for intensified civil strife in the Philippines

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
26 May 2007

The Arroyo regime has set the stage for intensified civil strife in the Philippines by having used the most outrageous ways of vote buying, fraud and mass intimidation to frustrate the will of the electorate, dominate the �election� of local executive officials and the congressmen and secure the fake president from impeachment. The delayed Comelec count in the senatorial and party list elections has allowed the operatives of the regime to engage in further cheating at various levels and in various ways.

Anticipating the rise of popular resistance against the widespread electoral anomalies and the worsening conditions of exploitation and oppression, the regime is poised to use the newly-enacted Anti-Terrorism Law as a further license for the reactionary military and police forces to suppress the revolutionary forces, the legal opposition forces and the broad masses of the people. Knowing no bounds for its greed, the regime is also expected to perpetuate its leaders in power by amending the 1987 constitution in order to shift Marcos-style from the presidential form of government to a parliamentary one under a presidential autocrat.

The people are suffering massive unemployment, the decline of real incomes, the soaring costs of living, superprofit-taking by foreign monopoly corporations, mounting tax and debt burdens, widespread poverty, hunger and malnutrition and all the other vicissitudes under the US-dictated policy of �neoliberal globalization�. The illusion of economic growth and peso appreciation through excessive foreign and local borrowing is going to burst like a bubble. The worsening economic social crisis generates the worsening political crisis of the ruling system. The contradictions among the reactionaries are further sharpening as the ruling Arroyo clique becomes more arrogant with its fake electoral victory and tends to monopolize power and the bureaucratic loot.

The broad masses of the people are seething with just indignation. They are fed up with the regime�s puppetry to foreign interests, unbridled corruption, repeated electoral fraud and gross human rights violations. The legal opposition forces are bound to develop a more effective broad united front against the regime. The revolutionary forces belonging to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) are determined to intensify the revolutionary armed struggle for national liberation and democracy. The people hope to uphold, defend and promote their national and democratic rights and interests through all forms of struggle.

Through its publications, the Communist Party of the Philippines has issued declarations to raise the people�s war to a new and higher level and has directed the New People�s Army to intensify its tactical offensives against the armed personnel of the state, violators of human rights, despotic landlords, foreign-owned plantations, mining companies, logging companies for export and other enterprises that are extremely exploitative and detrimental to the nation, the working people and the environment.

Under the direction of the US war of terror, the Arroyo regime is hell-bent on trying to destroy the revolutionary movement of the people. It is emboldened by the constant flow of US interventionist troops and increased US military supplies. It seeks to perpetuate itself in power beyond 2010 with the use of armed force against the people and the revolutionary forces. Thus, it persists in preventing the peace negotiations between the reactionary government and the NDFP. It is doing everything to challenge and drive the people and revolutionary forces to wage armed revolution. ###

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